Reconstruction Cost and Insurance Refunding Empirical Evidences for Long-Span-Beam Buildings Struck by the 2012 Emilia-Romagna Earthquake
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Reconstruction Cost and Insurance Refunding Empirical Evidences for Long-span-beam Buildings Struck by the 2012 Emilia-Romagna Earthquake Leonardo ROSSI 1 1 RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany Contact e-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT: From the 2012 Emilia-Romagna earthquake much can be learnt in terms of seismic economic consequences. The public institutions’ need for comparable and accessible data, to be used within the reconstruction process, is the reason why researchers can finally put their hands on a vast, consistent and reliable seismic damage and loss database. In particular, after the 2012 seismic sequence, the local administrative authority, Regione Emilia-Romagna, started collecting relevant information regarding consequences occurred to structures and infrastructures, public housing, cultural heritage and business facilities. For what concerns the latter, the so-called SFINGE database was assembled in more than 6 years of reconstruction process. In SFINGE, among other things, reconstruction costs and insurance refunding were documented. In this paper, the author presents some results obtained by exploring such database, processing and checking data on thousands of buildings. In particular, long-span-beam structures were taken into consideration: for them, empirical evidences are plotted and summarized. Study results can be included within the state of the art of seismic performance assessment tools. Keywords: 2012 Emilia earthquake, consequence curves, business facilities, seismic insurance, long-span-beam buildings. 1 INTRODUCTION The seismic sequence that, in May 2012, struck a highly industrialized area of Northern Italy, provoked vast damage to structures and infrastructures, cultural heritage and business activities. During the events (also known as Emilia-Romagna Earthquake), 28 people lost their life, and at least 300 were injured; at the same time, more than 40-thousand workers, from more than 3700 different enterprises, faced temporary lay-off (R E-R, 2012a). Assessed loss grand total within the affected area reached EUR 13.2 billion, of which at least 2.41 are related to enterprises (ARR, 2018). Soon after the emergency phase, the local administrative authority, Regione Emilia- Romagna, launched an extensive reconstruction campaign, divided into 3 subprograms: one for private housing – “MUDE”, see (R E-R, 2012c) –, one for infrastructures and cultural heritage – “FENICE”, see (R E-R, 2012b) –, and one for business activities – “SFINGE”, see (R E-R, 2012d). In this paper, the focus is on data belonging to SFINGE’s database. Such database hosts, among other things, vast and reliable information regarding the occurred damage, the reconstruction costs, and details about insurance refunding. 1 License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ 2 CONSEQUENCES OF THE EMILIA-ROMAGNA EARTHQUAKE 2.1 Reference framework After May 2012, numerous reports and scientific papers were dedicated both to the Emilia- Romagna seismic sequence – see INGV (2015), Galli (2012), Scognamiglio (2012), Mucciarelli (2014) – and its effects – for example, Parisi (2012) and Rossetto (2012); in particular, for what concerns structural performance, special emphasis was paid to a specific class of structures widely adopted in industrial facilities, i.e. long-span-beam precast RC buildings (hereby referred to as LSB). Such buildings, for a description see also Bonfanti (2008), have precast beams of length typically between 10 and 20 m; columns can be prefabricated or not, and made in RC or masonry. Concrete panels or infill brick walls define the structures’ perimeter. In general, both the seismic overcapacity, as well as the global ductility of these buildings, can be considered quite limited. An example of damaged LSB structure is given in Figure 1. Studies about this structural typology during the 2012 seismic sequence can be found in Savoia (2012), Casotto (2014), Magliulo (2014), Liberatore (2013), and Buratti (2017). On one hand, some of those works were written taking into consideration field inspection reports and on-site failure observations; on the other hand, database regarding non-damaged structures were used as a source of information. Recently, innovative results about actually damaged buildings were obtained by exploring data in the Emilia-Romagna’s SFINGE database (Rossi, 2019a): interestingly, in this case, data are available at large scale about actually damaged structures, with thousands of relevant entries properly classified and organized in a database. The author of this paper accessed SFINGE’s (non- sensitive) information, under a special scientific agreement between RWTH Aachen University and Regione Emilia-Romagna (Pres. R E-R, 2015), within the research project DatA ESPerT (Rossi, 2016). On one hand, Regione Emilia-Romagna provided the author with an electronic worksheet summarizing the main data records. On the other hand, during scientific visits at Emilia-Romagna’s headquarters, the author interrogated SFINGE, having direct access to its entire archive. In this paper, as a first step, the author summarizes the main results of the information discovery sessions performed (see also: Rossi, 2019a); furthermore, precious insights regarding the insurance refunding data are reported in the text. Figure 1. Example of LSB damaged building in Emilia-Romagna (source: Agenzia regionale per la ricostruzione – Sisma 2012). 2.2 Consequence variables After the 2012 earthquake, in order to properly manage the bottom-up refunding process, the Italian public authorities decided to take three reference variables as main input of every SFINGE application: experienced loss (L), induced cost (C), and insurance refunding (I). Such variables’ values were used – casa by case – so to determine the actual amount of money to be finally granted by the state to the business owner (G) (see also Rossi, 2019a). On one hand, L can be considered as the economic value that was destroyed by the earthquake; it is assessed by the applicant before 2 reconstruction works start, by means of official price lists, market price levels and expert judgement. On the other hand, C is the money actually spent during the reconstruction works – and is obtained by summing up all the expenses actually documented in receipts; C includes money for reconstruction works, machineries repair actions, goods repurchase, and business relocation. In other words, L can be considered as a first approximation of the actually induced cost C (further details are given in Rossi, 2019b). For what concerns I, it is about the amount of money paid by the insurance companies to the business owners: Such variable was introduced in order to avoid overcompensation to the enterprises. In SFINGE database, the total number of well-documented damaged buildings is 4423. Of these, 2104 are LSB-type, while the rest (2319) are “housing-type”. For the sake of brevity, results reported in the second part of this work will refer just to C and I variables, and to the sole LSB-type buildings. 2.3 Consequence classification In collecting consequence data for SFINGE database, Regione Emilia-Romagna adopted a classification system according to which each enterprise belongs to one business macro-sector among industry, trade, and agriculture. Furthermore, suffered consequences were organized in 5 different main categories: real-estate, business relocation, capital goods, in-stock products, and special food products. Definitions are given in the following – (the bullet point list is taken from Rossi, 2019a). Real estate, or closely related to it (REA): Primary or secondary structural components of buildings (e.g. RC frames and cladding panels), including finishes (e.g. windows or doors) and non-productive systems (e.g. electrical systems). Business relocation (REL): Temporary relocation of the enterprise’s activities to another site within the affected area. The purchase and rental of temporary structures (e.g. tents), the connection of utilities, and the moving of production facilities are also included in this category. Capital goods, except real estate (CAP): Machinery (e.g. metal lathes), tools (e.g. compressors), equipment (e.g. cabinets) and systems for production (e.g. air purification systems); hardware in general. In stock goods (STO): Raw material (e.g. glass jars), finished and semi-finished products in storage (e.g. canned food), who lost at least 20% of their initial value. Products (PRO): Special food and agriculture products: this is the case of aged cheese and balsamic vinegar. This category – that represents quite an important term on the regional budget – is only related to enterprises in agriculture. Examples of the different categories are easily available in SFINGE database: In Figure 2a, the reader can see a precast RC building, a part of which collapsed, also damaging external steel stairs (REA). In Figure 2b, a case of production facility relocation (REL) is illustrated: a small business in agriculture is temporary reinstalled in a tent structure. In Figure 3a, a stack of glass jars (STO) fall down over a forklift (CAP); in Figure 3b, a light metal structure hosting aged cheese (PRO) overturned, losing its content and also damaging the lighting system (REA). 3 (a) (b) Figure 2. Examples of consequences after the 2012 Emilia earthquake (a) REA (b) REL (source: Agenzia regionale per la ricostruzione – Sisma 2012). (a) (b) Figure 3. Examples of consequences after the 2012 Emilia earthquake (a) STO and CAP (b) PRO and REA (source: Agenzia regionale per